Bluetooth" Qualification Program Overview

In this article, derived from the author’s book Bluetooth Revealed, Second Edition, Bluetooth wireless communication authority Brent A. Miller presents an overview of the Bluetooth qualification program (BQP). The BQP was recently instituted by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) to help ensure that products bearing the Bluetooth logo conform to the Bluetooth specification.

This chapter is from the book

What Is Qualification?

Qualification is the process by which an implementation of a
specification is tested to ensure that it faithfully follows the specification.
Many major public specifications in the information technology and
communications industries include some sort of qualification program. Often,
these programs include a formal process and a set of test cases against which
implementations are tested, and this is also the case for the Bluetooth
qualification program.

Qualification is intended to help ensure that products correctly and
completely (at least to the extent that completeness applies to a particular
product) implement the specification. At least in theory, if all product
implementations comply with the same specification, they ought to interoperate
with each other (this is not strictly true in practice, which is why other
mechanisms to promote interoperability are also in place).